A computer system may need to be monitored by a human operator for various reasons. For example, monitoring of a computer system by a human operator may be desired for security reasons. Incoming and/or outgoing data traffic and/or the system in general for “odd” and unexpected events can be constantly monitored by one or more human operators to prevent malicious data communications and operation in the system. A computer network may also be monitored by an operator for ensuring correct and efficient operation thereof, and to detect possible problems as early as possible to prevent them becoming serious ones. In addition to operator based monitoring and control, security systems such as firewalls and/or other automated security functions can be provided to improve security. These typically operate based on predefined rules such as predefined filtering criteria.
In general, control, and in particular security control, based on operator monitoring is desired since human operators are considered more difficult to be tricked into allowing malicious communications and better in detecting and reacting to unusual and unexpected or otherwise suspicious events in a computer system than e.g. software based automated security systems.
A computer system such as closed network of an organization (e.g. a business, a governmental body and so forth) can have one or more operators who continuously monitor the operation of the network, in particular communications in and out of the system, via appropriate monitoring interface and terminal apparatus. If an operator detects anything usual or suspects malicious actions for any reason, he can take appropriate control actions. For example, he can close any gateway(s) between the monitored system and other system(s) and thus prevent communications with external devices altogether, or selectively prevent and allow in and/or out data communications. Also, the operator can attempt to fixing of problems as soon as these are is detected.
It is noted that the herein discussed matters are not limited to any particular type of computerised system but may occur in any system where monitoring of the operation of the system by an operator may be needed.